IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: PLEASE READ

When you are a writer you must occasionally ask yourself an unavoidable question. Namely “Am I telling the kind of story I want to tell?” At the moment, my answer to that is no.

My adventures on Patreon began in July of 2017, taking fanfiction requests for pennies to help get the bills paid while working a shitty retail job. I was having a lot of fun creating freely, making friends, and getting a lil support now and again. It was around mid 2018 where I decided to try an experiment and create Monster Brothel, a choose your own adventure style of story-telling where people could find different creatures in the narrative, have some fun, and still work through a story with a satisfying conclusion. It was the first time I had flexed my original narrative skills in some time and it made me really happy to find a community that wanted such content. I spent two years making Monster Brothel come to life and while I know it wasn't perfect, I learned a lot from that piece and it still holds a special place in my heart.

As I was in the final months of MB, I started thinking about Verdant. It didn't have a name then, just a general concept I was tossing around with trusted friends. Before I knew this thing had it's hooks in me, and it quickly became a story I wanted to tell. A writer creating their own world is like giving a pre-schooler a sandbox and unlimited recess. All I wanted to do was pull my readers over by the hand and show them what part of the world I was building. At the time, MB was doing well, and people wanted more like that. So without realizing it I took my unlimited sandbox and immediately began to limit myself by believing I had to adhere to the CYOA format.

Choose your own adventure works for short form story-telling like Monster Brothel. It's contained, semi-episodic, and the choices you make may effect the ending but not the overall story. With Verdant, I was writing the story of a nation and it's people complete with complex motivations, character development, and narrative. None of which did I have the time to show in a format which requires comprised passages and frequent divergence in plot in order to keep the reader motivated to continue. I began relying on my readers to have done the “homework” of reading the Worldbuilding, Lore, and content drops I offered on Patreon to even know what I was talking about.

To me, this is the laziest form for writing. It is utterly dependent on TELL not SHOW and limits the story. I began cutting corners and keeping things as basic as possible in order to avoid passages becoming too lengthy and ensuring that I could split pathways and change the narrative down the line to account for player choices. I was shredding my world down to it's baseboards in order to make it something playable without considering that it didn't have to be.

Then 2020 happened. Without revisiting everything from last year, we lost a lot of our supporters. I respect that. People had to make the best decision possible and that meant saving money. Many of them stayed in the community and I'm grateful to have them. We got a spot of luck and my wife got a full time job, which meant we would be stable for now but it also meant her free time took a big cut and she is no longer able to produce artwork on a schedule. Both of these were major blows to the whole Verdant CYOA game concept so we put it on hiatus and I made some one shot MB content for everyone to relax and have fun with. I figured we would take the time to reassess and come back in the new year with a game plan.

I came back ready to hit the ground running, excited to return to my sandbox and play with a new character. But the downtime also meant I had time to think on the status of my creation and what I wanted from it. Again, that question: “Am I telling the story I want to tell?”

And the answer was no.

After some consideration, I'm dumping the CYOA (choose your own adventure) format. It worked for Monster Brothel. It does not work for Verdant. This tale requires long form story telling in which we can explore complex narratives, character development, and motivations to a deeper extent. I will leave up the CYOA content for the time being on the website, and over the next month or so our Patreon may change it's look a bit, but my hope is this will all be for the better.

What does this mean in the immediate future?

- Some of you may no longer wish to support this project as a chapter by chapter development. I will be sad to see you go but I respect your choices. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your support through the years and let you know that you are welcome to stay in the community through our Discord server. Many of you have made friends there and I would never want to cut you off just because you can't support the Patreon any more.

- At the end of March we will be cutting the $10, $20 and $40 Tiers from our Patreon. For the time being, we will reduce everything to $1 & $5 Tiers, allowing more people to retain access to our content, website, and community for a much-reduced cost.

* $1Tier: This tier will allow subscribers support the developing story at their leisure and remain informed about the status of the story and when it will be updated. $1 Subscribers will still remain a part of the Discord community.
* $5 Tier: This tier will allow subscribers to retain access to the website for FREE on a month-by-month basis, as well as give them access to the beta version of the story before it is released to the public. They will have access to content drops such as Worldbuilding & Lore, as well as remain a part of the Discord community.

- Those of you who subscribed to the $40 Tier in order to have your character put in Verdant will be excited to know I am keeping those characters! We worked hard on them and I have no intention of dropping them from the story. Many of them may even get bigger parts and more expanded development now that I don't have to limit content by so much!

We are currently working on how we want to progress with this new format, working on the timeline expectations and what we will offer on the website from now on. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to me through Patreon or through Discord. I will make myself as available as possible to answer your concerns.

Thank you again for being with me on this journey. I know this is a difficult and maybe even confusing change. Please know that is comes from a desire to create the world I promised and put forth the best possible effort in my writing and story-telling. As we move forward, I hope you will find a thrill in rediscovering Verdant as it was intended and getting to know her as I have. We are always happy to have you here and we look forward to seeing this project progress in a more accessible fashion.

Kalynn & Laura